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Palin's Korea mixup

Sarah Palin’s recent media appearances -- her TV show, her daughter’s Dancing With the Stars run, and her new book tour -- have whipped perennially high media interest in Palin to a froth. That all provides a pretty pleasant position for the former Alaska governor to be sitting in the week that her new book hits stores at the opening of the holiday shopping season. But, as always, the spotlight – and her recent spate of slaps at her critics – has its pitfalls for Palin.

Combine the extra publicity (including today’s new developments in the back and forth between Palin and the ‘blue blood’ Bush family, as she described it) with a pre-holiday week that’s notorious for its political news blackout, and an unintentional-but-fairly-glaring geopolitical tongue twister garners national headlines.

“Obviously we gotta stand with our North Korean allies," she said, after expressing her concern that the White House would fail to react aggressively enough to the situation.

Beck quickly corrected the former Alaska governor, who had previously correctly identified North Korea as the aggressor, and the interview moved along.

The mixup certainly doesn’t help Palin’s efforts (see: her recent tackling of fiscal policy) to be perceived as an informed and serious leader on policy issues as she mulls a possible run at the White House.

That said, had 2012 possibles Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee (who memorably developed a reputation for a hazy understanding of some foreign policy issues back when he was making his first run at the White House) made the same slip, it’s unlikely anyone would have paused from their Turkey Day festivities to notice.